The best tradition of a Yankee-infested post-season is the hatchet job to Alex Rodriguez whenever the Yankees fail. They are heading to the tourney this year,which means after Alex Rodriguez’s first 0-for playoff game we’ll get to read about how awful he is in the post-season. With that in mind let’s address the topic before the headlines do.

Alex Rodriguez does not hit well in the playoffs

His career wOBA in the regular season is .412. His career post-season wOBA is .368. Relative to his standards he doesn’t hit well in the playoffs.

He’s been the invisible man with the Yankees

Let’s drop wOBA for a moment and simply look at his playoff series lines in pinstripes:

2004 ALDS: .421/.476/.737 (21 PA)
2004 ALCS: .258/.378/.561 (37 PA)
2005 ALDS: .133/.381/.200 (21 PA)
2006 ALDS: .071/.071/.071 (14 PA)
2007 ALDS: .267/.353/.467 (17 PA)

You have one great series and two awful, and two below A-Rod standards. Invisible? No. Not as good as his regular season self? Yes. The sample size isn’t big enough to say whether this is simply random fluctuation or a fear of the post-season stage.

A-Rod isn’t clutch

Our glossary defines the Clutch statistic as:

Clutch – How much better or worse a player does in high leverage situations than he would have done in a context neutral environment.

You can read more about it here, but let’s look at those playoff years and their Clutch figures:

2004: 0.45
2005: -0.09
2006: -0.08
2007: -0.12

Overall positive, but recent history has been unkind to Rodriguez. How about a quick comparison to Derek Jeter’s figures during that same time period?

2004: -0.05
2005: -0.07
2006: -0.30
2007: -0.01

Oh. Well then.

The rumors and bits of information had been floating around for a few days and weeks now. Really, it was no surprise that the subject was coming up. Aged 68, and in his 20th consecutive season as manager of the Braves, people have been wondering how much longer Bobby Cox would be around inside the Atlanta clubhouse.

Today, we got official word from the man himself. Cox will return next season as head coach and then retire after the 2010 season, remaining with the team as a consultant for at least the next five years.

Cox ascended to the Major League manager role at just 36, in 1978 when he first took over the Braves and was there until fired by owner Ted Turner after the 1981 season. Cox went on to manager the Toronto Blue Jays for four years and then in 1986 returned to Atlanta as the General Manager.

Four years after that, and Cox re-took over the job as Manager and solidified his legacy in the city. Cox’s first full season back at the helm saw the Braves go from worst to first as grab a playoff spot and ultimately a World Series berth, lost to the Twins in seven games. That would be year one of fourteen consecutive division titles, lasting until the 2006 season.

It’s going to be difficult to think of the Braves without Bobby Cox who next year will tie Tommy Lasorda in 4th place for most seasons managing a single team. It’s been a good run for you Bobby. Although those who place premiums of the randomness of winning in the postseason might say otherwise, I find it hard to sneeze at such consistence quality as your 1990s and early 2000s run displayed.

During the Rays/M’s game, announcer Dewayne Staats noted that Carl Crawford’s .307 batting average was good for seventh best in the American League. Erik Hahmann – my co-writer at DRaysBay – questioned the rank, insinuating it seemed a little on the low-end for a top 10 BA. Sure enough, Staats and the Rays media notes were correct.

22 AL batters (who have qualified) have recorded hits in roughly 30% of their total at-bats; last year 17 hit .300; 20 in 2007; and 20 once more in 2006. How about Erik’s assertion that .307 usually doesn’t land you in the top 10? Here are the cutoff averages – so to speak – of the tenth highest BA in each of those years:

2008 – Nick Markakis .306
2007 – Dustin Pedroia .317
2006 – Reed Johnson: .319

In some ways this is a renaissance of .300 hitters on the Junior Circuit – the Angels are to thank for some of this – however the quality of the best batting averages appears to be slipping a bit. The first reason that pops to mind for deflated batting averages is an increased emphasis across baseball on defense. The A.L. features the Rays, Mariners, and Rangers – three of the best defensive clubs in the game – and if this is the case, shouldn’t it show up in the league’s non-pitcher BABIP rates? Let’s look.

2009 – .305
2008 – .303
2007 – .309
2006 – .307

Nothing there other than simple fluctuation. The only other thing I can think of is a possible increase in strikeouts. Here are those totals:

2009 – 20.4%
2008 – 19.6%
2007 – 19.6%
2006 – 18.5%

Well, there’s certainly something there, albeit not nearly enough to point to an increase in whiffs as the reason for deflated batting averages. Does it play some kind of role in the change? Certainly.

It’ll be interesting to see if the league strikeout rate continues to climb into next season and whether batting averages continue to drop.

Ground-ball rates are rather trendy right now in Major League Baseball, and for good reason. If you can find pitchers with high strikeout rates, as well as high ground-ball rates, then you have a real keeper on your staff. The rational behind the love of the ground ball is pretty simple. If a ball is hit on the ground it’s pretty hard for it to leave the park for a three-run homer.

With enough innings to qualify (He pitched 61.1 innings before being shutdown to protect his arm), the Blue Jays’ Marc Rzepczynski would rank 13th in the Major Leagues in ground-ball rate, sandwiched between Josh Johnson of the Marlins and Mike Pelfrey of the Mets. The Giants’ Daniel Runzler has a ground-ball rate of 50%, albeit it in a very small sample size of just 5.2 innings (seven appearances).

Both Rzepczynski and Runzler have something in common. They were both selected in the 2007 amateur draft and both players were taken out of UC Riverside. In his minor league career spanning parts of three seasons, Rzepczynski had a ground-ball rate of 63.8%, which is 2.4% better than current MLB leader Joel Pineiro’s 61.4%. Runzler has a career minor-league rate of 62.8%.

In the past six drafts (2004-09), 17 pitchers have been selected out of UC Riverside. Prior to the 2007 draft, the most notable pitchers out of the six taken were Anthony Claggett (drafted by the Tigers and traded to the Yankees), and Daniel Stange (drafted by the Diamondbacks). Neither pitcher has an overly impressive career ground-ball rate.

Then comes the 2007 draft. Along with Rzepczynski and Runzler, James Simmons (Athletics) and Adam Reifer (Cardinals) were also drafted. Both pitchers have struggled more than their former teammates, but they continue to have potential as both pitchers made their clubs’ Top 30 prospect lists prior to 2009 (according to Baseball America).

Since being drafted, Simmons’ ground-ball rates have actually declined each year, which could very well be one of the reasons why he’s struggled to live up to being selected 25th overall in ’07. His repertoire, minus the worm-burning, is pretty average. Reifer had a dazzling first full season in pro ball in 2008 but he struggled mightily this season. His ground-ball rate dropped 15% – and he also lost 3.0 K/9 off of his strikeout rate.

In 2008, two more pitchers – both relievers in pro ball – were selected out of UC Riverside, although Robert Waite (Tigers) was the highest drafted player in the 17th round. Stephen Penney was also selected and signed with Seattle. Waite’s career ground-ball rate is 54.5%, and Penney’s is 54.9%.

Five more players were selected in 2009 and three of those pitchers also displayed solid ground-ball rates in their debuts: Joe Kelly (Cardinals, 56.4 GB%), Paul Applebee (Nationals, 40.6%), Matt Montgomery (Marlins, 64.7%), Paul Bargas (Rockies, 38.8%), and Ryan Platt (Brewers, 54.4%).

Perhaps it’s a coincidence that many UC Riverside pitchers have shown the ability to induce an above-average number of ground balls. Then again, maybe it’s not by chance and the school’s coaching staff is on to something. Either way, UC Riverside alums should be followed over the next few seasons – especially if ground-ball rates continue to gain in popularity.

Coming into the season two members of the A’s youthful rotation were particularly exciting to watch. Trevor Cahill and Brett Anderson were both top prospects and linked by a host of similarities, both were just 21 years old to start the season, had never pitched above AA and had the rare combination of good ground ball and strikeout numbers. Both pitchers struck out over 8 batters per 9 innings and got over 50% ground balls per ball in play at every level in the minors coming into this year. The big difference is that Anderson combined those skills with excellent walk numbers, while Cahill’s were poor.

That difference as translated to the bigs. Anderson is having an amazing season. By FIP he is the 10th best starter in the AL, an amazing feat for someone of his age and experience. Dave C. and I have each profiled him already (here and here), so I will turn my attention to Cahill’s season.

His ground ball rate is solid (over 47%), but his walk (3.6 per 9) and strikeout (4.6 per 9) numbers have been bad. In fact his K/BB ratio is second worst (again to John Lannan) among qualifying starters. Here is the movement on his pitches.

Like many ground ball pitchers Cahill throws a lot of fastballs (almost 70% of the time), and the problem is he has not been very good at getting them in the zone. His fastballs are in the permissive pfx zone 50% of the time, compared to the 55% for the average fastball. This is one of those things that seems like a small difference but is not. The variation is fastball zone percentage is narrow, so 50% is quite low, and over the course of the whole year those extra balls really pile up.

Cahill has the stuff. His two-seam fastball induces lots of ground balls (55%) while getting an almost average whiff rate (13%) and his good changeup gives him a solid option against lefties. Although this has been a rough year he is very young and with improvement in his command he will be a solid pitcher.

With a win over the Red Sox last night, Zack Greinke should have just about locked up the AL Cy Young award. Other pitchers are having good years, but no one has dominated like Greinke has. He’s been the best pitcher in the league by a pretty good margin. His 2.34 FIP looks like something right out of Pedro Martinez’s prime. But that thought process led me to look up Pedro’s page, and as always, that led to my eyes popping out of my head when I saw his 1999 line. It’s just not possible to look at his numbers from a decade ago and not be utterly amazed.

213 innings. 160 hits. 9 home runs. 37 walks. 313 strikeouts. 1.39 FIP.

1.39 FIP in a season where league average was 4.71. Pedro was 3.3 runs per nine innings better than a league average pitcher. Over 213 innings, thats 80 runs better than average, or about 100 runs better than replacement. A hundred runs. Pedro was worth something like +10 wins over the 1999 season. If it’s not the greatest pitcher season of all time, it’s in the discussion.

Or, if we want to get back to discussing Greinke, the 1999 version of Pedro was nearly a full run per game better than the guy who has been hands down the best pitcher in the American League this year. That’s not a knock against Greinke – Pedro’s 1999 season was just so remarkably good that we could go the rest of our lives without anyone ever touching it.

He’s obviously not the same guy now that he was in his prime, but it’s still worth remembering how amazing he was a decade ago.

During the first half of the year Edwin Jackson looked like a different pitcher. For years his hype had preceded his performance, so much so that you began wondering whether he was ever going to figure it out, or simply burn out like Daniel Cabrera. Then the first half of 2009 happened and wham. Jackson even made his first all-star team. Well, his second half numbers have raised a new question: was Jackson of the first half simply a fluke?

Take a look at his strikeout and walk ratios independent of innings, home runs, and hits:

K%
2006-2008: 15.3%
2009 first half: 20.0%
2009 second half: 16.6%

Unintentional BB%
2006-2008: 10.8%
2009 first half: 7.0%
2009 second half: 8.0%

Where both rates saw massive improvements in the first half, they’ve basically regressed to the mid-points of 2006-2008 and the 2009 first half over these past few months. Meanwhile, Jackson only allowed 10 home runs in 18 starts during the first half and has allowed 15 in his 12 second half starts; this in conjunction with a BABIP that was below .250 in the first half and over .310 in the second.

So it’s no surprise that Edwin’s ERA in the second half is near 4.8 while his first half ERA was 2.52. His FIP is still lower than recent years but his tRA is actually his second best since 2006 – with his best coming in 2006, and we know how the next few years turned out. Jackson has seemingly improved, but not to the degree many seemed to think during those early months.

Travis Snider has been back in the major leagues for a little over a month now. Needless to say, he’s still on the learning curve. Over the last 30 days Snider is reaching base 32.7% of the time and has a .407 slugging percentage. He’s just shy of performing like a big league hitter, minus one aspect. In this ~100 at-bat sample, he’s striking out nearly 47% of the time.

Snider’s 65.6% contact rate over that timeframe is surprisingly not the lowest in baseball (Mark Reynolds, Brad Hawpe, and Jason Bay are blocking him from that dubious honor) but he is in the bottom five. Snider showcased similar issues with contact in a much smaller sample last season and has always possessed a tendency to whiff a decent amount. Baseball America highlighted this as a major concern in their pre-season scouting report of Snider:

Because lefthanders threw him a steady diet of offspeed pitches—even in hitter’s counts—Snider struggled versus southpaws in the high minors, hitting a mere .233/.295/.310 in a limited sample of 116 Double-A and Triple-A at-bats. Showing a more patient approach could help him overcome this shortcoming, as he showed a tendency toward free swinging as he moved up the ladder. It’s not a long-term concern if he refines his approach to the point where he’s confident hitting with two strikes.

His power potential is yet to show up in the majors either. A .175 ISO is nothing to write home about, but a .326 ISO posted during his 200 plate appearance stint in Triple-A this season is. Nobody expects him to hit for that much power on a consistent basis, just a little bit more above league average would be a nice starting point.

Snider is only 21-years-old so there’s plenty of time for him to mature. In the meanwhile, opposing pitchers are going to pad their strikeout totals against him.

Scott Gray’s The Mind of Bill James is an excellent book — one whose entire contents I’m tempted to reproduce here except for (a) it’d break every copyright law in existence and (b) all that typing would hella exacerbate my ulnar claw.

Anyway, believe me when I say that Gray does an excellent job of demonstrating the wide-ranging import of Bill James’s work. Believe me, also, when I say that Gray is smart to occasionally quote at length from the Abstracts and other of James’s books.

Which, that’s exactly what he does at the beginning of chapter three of the aforementioned book. Regard, the Master at work:

When the numbers melt into the language, they acquire the power to do all of the things which language can do, to become fiction and drama and poetry. Am I imagining things? Do not the numbers of Ted Williams detail a story of fierce talent and, by the char of their ugly gaps, the ravages of exquisite frustration that ever accompany imperfect times? Do not the numbers of Roberto Clemente spell out a novella of irritable determination straining toward higher and higher peaks until snapped suddenly by an arbitrary, but now inevitable, machina? Do not the stressed and unstressed syllables of Willie Davis‘ prime suggest an iambic indifference Is there not a cavalcata in Pete Rose’s charges? Is there no union of thrill and agony in Roger Maris‘ numbers? How else can one explain the phenomenon of baseball cards, which is that a chart of numbers that would put an actuary to sleep can be made to dance if you put it on one side of a card and Bombo Rivera’s picture on the other.

First off, I’d like to mention how, despite being alone in my living room when I first read that, I still stood up and began a Hollywood movie-style slow clap.

Second off, here’s the exciting idea that James gives us: that numbers are able to take on a narrative quality.

My reaction when I read that was something like: hey, I wanna play along. Lucky for me, I have a platform to do that.

So what I did was to isolate three players whose numbers tell an interesting story. Here they are.

Heath Bell, RHRP, San Diego
The story that Bell’s numbers tell us is of a pitcher whose talent was, in the parlance of our 43rd president, misunderestimated. The guilty club? Shockingly, the Mets. Yes, the same team whose bullpen effectively handed division titles to Philadelphia in both the 2007 and 2008 seasons didn’t have space for a pitcher who was posting good fielding-independent numbers. Regard Bell’s first three MLB seasons:

Season	Team	IP	gmLI	ERA	tRA	tRA*	FIP	xFIP	BABIP
2004	Mets	24.1	0.93	3.33	3.81	4.08	4.24	3.02	0.290
2005	Mets	46.2	0.75	5.59	4.01	3.98	2.91	3.39	0.374
2006	Mets	37.0	0.59	5.11	5.69	4.60	4.25	3.21	0.394

That gmLI thing, in case you don’t know, is the average Leverage Index of all the times a pitcher enters a game over the course of a season. One (1) is average. Below one indicates a low leverage situation. What those declining gmLIs show us is a team (New York) becoming increasingly hesitant to hand over important situations to one of its relievers (Bell). And if you look only at Bell’s ERAs, you’ll understand why. Were Bell’s 2005 and 2006 ERAs indicative of his skill, then New York’s reluctance would make sense. But cast your eyes rightward to the end of those rows, and you’ll see the more likely culprit for Bell’s seeming mediocrity: way inflated BABIPs. The most likely reason for Bell’s poor showing was a combo deal of bad luck and shoddy D. His tRA of 5.69 in 2006 is a red flag, but the regressed version (tRA*) from StatCorner and all the other sorts of metrics all say Bell wasn’t far off from his established levels.

In Novemeber of 2006, San Diego GM Kevin Towers sent Ben Johnson to New York for Bell and Royce Ring*. Johnson disappeared after 2007**. As for Bell? Ta Da!:

Season	Team	IP	gmLI	ERA	tRA	tRA*	FIP	xFIP	BABIP
2007	Padres	93.2	1.41	2.02	2.57	3.01	2.50	2.84	0.260
2008	Padres	78.0	1.57	3.58	3.62	4.18	3.34	3.87	0.291
2009	Padres	64.0	1.83	2.81	2.58	3.42	2.53	3.17	0.294

As you can see, he proceeded to be awesome. Awesomer than before, in fact. Whether that’s luck or actual improvement or because he had an established role, we don’t know. The point is, the talent was there. And even if said talent resided/resides in a sort of overweight-looking manbody, if said manbody strikes batters out and gets groundballs, who the eff cares?

*Setting off a nightmarish chain reaction of “Ring that Bell” puns across all America’s sports pages.
**Seriously. No dice from any of Baseball Reference, Baseball Cube, or Wikipedia. Is he okay?

David Hernandez, RHSP, Baltimore
Let’s play a game. The game is called One of These Things Is not Like the Other. The first thing you do is look at some numbers. Second, you say which one doesn’t belong. It starts right now.

Season	Team		IP	SO	K/9
2006	Orioles (A)	145.1	154	9.54
2007	Orioles (A+)	145.1	168	10.40
2008	Orioles (AA)	141	166	10.60
2009	Orioles (AAA)	57.1	79	12.40
2009	Orioles		91	59	5.84

Okay, so it’s not a super fun game, but at least it’s easy. What you see there are David Hernandez’s raw stats from 2006 – 2009. What you’ll notice is how is K/9 rates are super-good… in the minors. The Show hasn’t been very kind to Hernandez, right up to his most recent start versus Boston when he struck out only one in six innings.

Of course, the Average Reader is smart enough to say, “Well, sure, but those are just his raw minor league stats. Obviously his major league K-rates will be lower. The question is, How much lower?” Luckily for all of us, Jeff Sackmann’s on top of that junk. According to Minor League Splits, those same seasons (minus the 2009 MLB one) look alot like this:

Season	Team		MLE IP	MLE K	MLE K/9
2006	Orioles (A)	108.2	69	5.74
2007	Orioles (A+)	149.2	119	7.18
2008	Orioles (AA)	135.1	128	8.53
2009	Orioles (AAA)	57.2	66	10.38

It’s interesting to note how dramatically Hernandez improves across these four seasons. Speaking anecdotally, I’m not sure I’ve seen many pitchers exhibit such stark linear improvement. Usually you get some regression here, some break-out there. But those K-rates increase almost exactly 1.5 K/9 every year. It’s strange.

But I digress. Back to the point: What’s the story here?

Well, there are two, kinda. The first concerns Hernandez himself. It’s a story we’ve heard before, as Dave Cameron pointed out a couple months ago: a pitcher dominates the minors with deception and a good breaking pitch, gets promoted to the majors, and gets shelled. Yusmeiro Petit‘s story is similar. So is Brandon McCarthy‘s and Garrett Olson’s.

The other story is of the mystery genre. It’s not quite Poirot-level excellent, but pretty good. It concerns a whole team of scientists (read: sabermetricians) who are unable to find a key missing ingredient to solve a case. The “case” requires that they project a pitcher’s potential major league success based on his minor league numbers. What they (i.e. the scientists) have noticed is that some pitchers simply don’t pitch at the major leagues like you’d expect them to.

Meanwhile, a group of gritty, skin-of-their-teeth detectives (read: scouts) say it’s because those certain pitchers don’t have major league stuff. The scientists say…

Okay, I’m gonna stop that, for all of our sakes. Here’s the point: Hernandez is young and his performance could improve, but the fact remains that he’s fairing at the major league level almost exactly how his scouting reports and pedigree suggested he would. Fin.

Albert Pujols, Crusher, St. Louis
El Hombre’s numbers tell the story of a young Dominican who immigrated with his family to the US, attended Maple Woods Community College in 1999, and either during his stay there or at least some time before 2001, BECAME A BASEBALLING CYBORG.

There’s no other possible explanation for Pujols’s twin traits of durability and production:

YR	PA	wOBA	Rank (Among players with > 400 PA)
2001	676	0.421	12
2002	675	0.402	18
2003	685	0.462	2
2004	692	0.439	3
2005	700	0.436	3
2006	634	0.448	2
2007	679	0.414	13
2008	641	0.458	1
2009	637	0.458	1

It’s hard to divine exactly what sort of transformation Pujols might’ve undergone — more like a RoboCop/Megacorp dystopian law enforcement sort of scenario, or more like a Wolverine/Weapon X clandestine government op-type of situation.

The fact that ESPN has attempted to make light of Pujols’s “secret” via one of their light-hearted This Is SportsCenter commercials should only serve to (a) strengthen our conviction that Pujols is indeed half-man, half-machine, and (b) suggest that ESPN — and, by extension, Disney Corp. — is somehow behind this operation.

My guess? That Pujols’s body was originally constructed to replace the current Teddy Roosevelt in the Hall of Presidents, except then the Disney execs realized that Teddy Roosevelt wasn’t shaped like the Incredible Hulk.

Toronto Blue Jays prospect J.P. Arencibia has had quite an interesting baseball career – both as an amateur and a pro. The catcher tied Alex Rodriguez‘ high-school mark for most career home runs at Westminster Christian high school in Florida. He was also a star player at the University of Tennessee, which led to him being selected 21st overall in the 2007 draft as the second college backstop taken; Matt Wieters went fifth overall to Baltimore.

A year after signing, Arencibia had a breakout year at the plate. He spent the season split between high-A and double-A with a combined triple-slash line of .298/.322/.527 with 27 homers and 105 RBI. It was the second-best offensive season for a catcher in 2008 behind… Wieters. Fast-forward to September 2009 and Wieters is playing behind the dish for Baltimore, while Arencibia has packed it in for the season and is probably back home in Florida. So what went wrong for the Jays prospect?

It can be tied to his approach at the plate, or more specifically, his walk rate. Even during his star campaign in 2008, Arencibia’s rate was 4.2% at high-A and just 2.6% at double-A. His strikeout rates were 18.5% and 21.0%. In 2009 at triple-A Las Vegas, his walk rate was 5.3% and his strikeout rate was 24.5%. With his power (.200+ career ISO), the whiff rate is reasonable. The walk rate, though, is not acceptable on any level. Overall in 2009, the right-handed hitter managed a line of just .236/.284/.444 with 21 homers in 466 at-bats.

Advanced pitchers (but many of whom are not good enough to pitch long-term in the Majors) exploited Arencibia’s approach. It’s pretty clear that there is no point in throwing him a quality strike with less than two strikes. He makes Mr. First-Pitch-Swinging Vernon Wells look down right selective. Ahead in the count, Arencibia hit .298, no doubt because pitchers had to groove a fastball down the middle of the plate. His strikeout rate was 13% in that situation. Behind in the count, Arencibia hit .185 with 63 Ks and zero walks in 162 at-bats (for a K rate of 32%).

Whereas Arencibia’s value has diminished as a hitter, his defense has actually improved significantly to the point where he is considered an above-average defensive catcher. When he was drafted, there were questions about whether or not he’d be able to stick as a catcher. Prior to the 2009 draft, Baseball America stated, “The verdict is out on whether he’ll stay behind the plate as a pro. His receiving skills are rudimentary at best, and his footwork prevents him from getting off better throws despite solid-average to plus arm strength.”

This excerpt is from the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

[Arencibia] has thrown out 33 percent of runners attempting to steal (20 of 61) since starting this season by gunning down just five of 31.

“Now I’m getting respected as a defensive catcher,” said Arencibia, who often throws out runners from his knees. “I feel I’m throwing better than I’ve ever thrown, and all aspects of my defense have gotten better.”

[Las Vegas] 51s manager Mike Basso, Toronto’s catching instructor the past two years and a former pro catcher, has worked extensively with Arencibia and said he has made great progress this season.

“He’s improved leaps and bounds from last year,” Basso said. “He has done a good job behind the plate, and he’s had spurts where he’s done good offensively.

As with most of the other 2009 Prospect Duds highlighted over the past two weeks, 2010 will be a big year for Arencibia. Once considered an offense-only prospect, he has the potential to be an all-around stud if he can learn from his mistakes. It’s been suggested more than once that he has been hesitant to change his aggressive ways, but that was before his struggles in 2009. If he can get that walk rate up to even 8-9%, the impact on his other numbers could be significant.